Rockers, racers and blobs among hottest games
November 19, 2009
Shaun Conlin
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
As with every holiday season, there's much hype and hoopla surrounding the release of new video games. However, only some live up to the promise. Here are 10 sure things.
1. The Beatles Rock Band (Wii, $60 or $160-$250 for bundles): As yet another Rock/Hero game, The Beatles Rock Band is only distinctive for its exclusive delivery of Fab Four music and associated paraphernalia. Otherwise, it's the old game of monkey-see, monkey-do (or monkey-sing, if three-part karaoke is your thing) on plastic guitars and drums. Banal as that sounds, fake musicianship is actually a lot of fun, rewarding even, especially if you have several players aping the same tune harmoniously.
Rated Teen (13+)
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, $70): The familiar gameplay mechanics of exploration and puzzle solving – interspersed with car chases, fisticuffs, gunfights and the none-too-occasional climactic kaboom – has never seen more polish. It's unmatched in its delivery of episodic treasure-hunting adventures, thanks to an unapologetically thin plot designed to deliver an unremitting string of death-defying escapades, triple-cross intrigues, and many a nail-biting cliffhanger.
Rated Teen (13+)
3. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360, $70): The third outing for Microsoft's seminal car and driver simulation, Forza 3 demonstrates the innate power and glory of the Xbox 360 properly harnessed. It's simply the best-looking race game of the season and the most comprehensive in both play modes and car content. Surprisingly, it's also the easiest to play, thanks to a great many driver assist options and one-click tune-ups for dummies.
Rated Everyone (6+)
4. Sing It! Pop Hits (Wii, $50): This is not just any old tween-flavoured karaoke featuring singalongs with Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and The Jonas Brothers.
No, Disney's Sing It Pop Hits actually has the potential to make singers out of hopeless croakers with an expanded, warmly welcome and surpassingly effective vocal coach mode that will guide would-be stars through the nuances of pitch control and breathing techniques.
Rated Everyone (6+)
5. New Super Mario Bros. (Wii, $60): The trademarked plumbers return to their mushroom-popping roots in the side-scrolling '80s, but now with this decade's sensibilities and graphical grandeur. It includes an option for up to four players to opt in or out of the game at any time and a wondrous, autopilot-like feature that will run characters through trickier segments while the player simply watches and, hopefully, learns.
Rated Everyone (6+)
6. Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition (PS3, $70): Fallout 3 was widely acclaimed as the best game of 2008, but Bethesda continued to release new content for its exploratory shooter-cum-role-playing game throughout 2009 as bundles of levels, missions, weapons, items, and more, at $10 a pop. The Game of the Year Edition is all that in one package, at the ingratiatingly original price of $70. That's more bang for your buck than you can shake a Precision Gatling Laser at.
Rated Mature (17+)
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3 or Xbox 360, $70): This game throws players into plausible, real-world soldiering scenarios involving terrorism, invasions and insurgencies, including attacks on U.S. soil. It's getting some flak as an entertainment product based on real-world conflict and tragedy, presenting it with uncanny audio/visual super-fidelity. Of course, it can be argued that a video game that can so easily cause the suspension of disbelief so as to rile and/or amaze is not only a meritorious technical achievement, but a testament to game developer intrepidness.
Rated Mature (17+)
8. A Boy and his Blob (Wii, $50): A unique, inventive adventure of deceptively childlike wonder and simplicity, a boy and his blob should not be missed by any gamer of any skill level or age. This side-scrolling puzzle-laden adventure is easygoing, yet enjoyably vexing as you control an unexceptional boy controlling his animated glop of goo that can transmogrify into a surplus of shapes, objects or tools when fed the right jelly bean.
Rated Everyone (6+)
9. God of War Collection (PS3, $40): The stupefyingly brilliant God of War series won't reach its blood-spattered, head-shorn, manually enucleated finale until the final chapter is released next year, but the first two chapters in this Greek mythology gore fest are available now for PS3. Originally released for PS2 in 2005 and 2007, the pair have been reimagined in high definition and sold for a song at $40.
Rated Mature (17+)
10. Halo 3 ODST: (Xbox 360, $70): As the Halo franchise is emblematic of Microsoft's rise in the console space, Halo 3 is an essential companion to any Xbox 360 found under a tinsel-laden tree this year.
While it's the latest in the series of space marines vs. aliens shoot-'em-ups ODST is straightforward and comparatively easy, making it an excellent primer for the multiplayer mayhem enjoyed by millions online, where it's not the least bit easy.
Rated Mature (17+)
Toronto Star